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A Safe Space internet radio show goes out live today from 1pm GMT from www.octopuscollective.org and is a live reinterpretation of the blog with electronics from Shaun and vocals by Kirsten Taylor – please tune in and see where it all takes us.

It will be available in the future from the same site.

Sorry I’ve not posted in ages – been a combination of new job and getting other work done, whilst keeping my head relatively straight. I will be posting in the next few weeks to bring everything up to date.

I did the next test internet radio live broadcast using Spreaker a couple of days a go. It was a live broadcast of improvised music by myself (Clutter) and Phil Powell (Sleepy Gumbo) doing an ambientish set using iPads and streamed from his mac.

We hit a few technical issues so we had a few drop outs in the sound, but all in all a good experiment in 1. Using tablets to make live improvised music and 2. Being able to play live to whoever would want to listen.

I have been jamming with Phil for a bit now, both being geeks and interested in what technology can do so we started an ipad duo to test some things out. The first couple of sessions were mainly using thumbjam and locking the 2 iPads and an iPhone together so everything sync was together and we could both add loops to the mix. We created some interested ‘doom jazz’ type sounds and were quite happy with the possibility of a band of tablet players. Our sessions usually involve having a good chat about the possibilities of where the technology could go. There’s the obvious avenue of midi and using backing tracks but we’ve been much more interested about using a tablet surface live, like a combination of instrument and effects rack.

I’ve been using an iPhone as a core part of my live set up for around 4 years now and enjoyed the physicality it can give to my playing, something sadly missing in most laptop based work. I was then given an iPad and at first thought wow, this is great I can use all the apps I have on the phone but with more control. So the duo with Phil started.

We have now had in the last few months a wave of highly usable and quite simply amazing apps coming out.

First we have the real game changer – audiobus is a simple but very powerful app that creates a signal chain for apps to run audio through each other. You have an instrument slot, or more, this runs into an effects slot, then into an output slot. Simple but now you can add effects to that clean sounding thumbjam harp….very exciting, very easy to use and works very well so far, the odd problem with apps still running in the background if you drop them out of audiobus, which won’t be a problem once it’s more practiced.

Then we has samplr – a loop sampler with audiobus integration that is made for iPad – I won’t go into details and do a review but if you like messing with live looping, sampling and such like this and audiobus are worth buying an iPad for. It really does up the game for sound manipulation. We’re still getting to grips with these tools and then added to the mix there is liveFX – any fan of kaoss pads will love this 4 channels of xy pad effects with filters, delays, distortion and much more with recordable movements to add more life to the mix. Last super mention goes to Echo Pad – a great dub type delay app for really adding that dub echo sound to your productions – wonderful stuff. I now have as my preferred choice samplr in audiobus, running through LiveFX and then Echo Pad, Phil has been using a similar set up but with added drumjam for loops.

So the live broadcast was using these tools mainly which gave a much looser, organic feel to the sound, just decide on tempo and away we go, we started to pull together some interesting ambient dance type things together, not unlike The Orb etc.

It really is an exciting time to be using this technology, with new avenues opening up on a weekly basis. We’re both looking forward to seeing what comes next. The developers are having amazing ideas but the really interesting things are coming from small teams that are listening to us the musicians and moving things forward very quickly.